Critical Mass to oppose Mottram — Tintwistle bypass

Last Fri­day saw a dozen peo­ple attend for the inau­gur­al Glos­sop Crit­i­cal Mass. Glos­sop had seen noth­ing like it — all kinds of cyclists, includ­ing a mobile sound sys­tem, with peo­ple com­ing from as far afield as Man­ches­ter and Traf­ford (cycling all the way to Glos­sop and back from it!) to attend. Plus some friends from Glos­sop Kinder Velo.

1st Glossop Critical MassLast Fri­day saw a dozen peo­ple attend for the inau­gur­al Glos­sop Crit­i­cal Mass. Glos­sop had seen noth­ing like it — all kinds of cyclists, includ­ing a mobile sound sys­tem, with peo­ple com­ing from as far afield as Man­ches­ter and Traf­ford (cycling all the way to Glos­sop and back from it!) to attend. Plus some friends from Glos­sop Kinder Velo.

We cer­tain­ly attract­ed a lot of atten­tion — along with a van load of police and a motor­cy­cle police­man. We’re clear­ly doing some­thing right.

And the press atten­tion has fol­lowed in its wake — today’s Man­ches­ter Evening News gave away a half page arti­cle and pho­to, along with a page on their web­site. The lat­ter is attract­ing a fair amount of debate (with pre­dictable com­ments from petrol­heads), so please feel free to join in.

The organ­is­ers, Road Alert Glos­sop, are keen to repeat the event in the not too dis­tant future, although next mon­th’s clock changes mean Fri­day evenings will be out until 2008.

We are told that video-pix­ies were present to film some of the pro­ceed­ings, and that a film will fol­low soon…

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PROTESTORS got on their bikes dur­ing the rush hour to cam­paign against the con­tro­ver­sial Mot­tram – Tin­twistle bypass.

They set off from Glos­sop rail­way sta­tion to cycle to Tin­twistle at Fri­day teatime on a four-mile route organ­ised by the Road Alert Glos­sop group.

The stunt was intend­ed to high­light the fact that bikes and peo­ple should be catered for on roads, not just cars and traf­fic, and raise aware­ness of Swal­lows Wood, which is threat­ened by the pro­posed 3.5‑mile bypass.
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“It went real­ly well,” said organ­is­er Jonathan Atkin­son.

“We got about 20 peo­ple out. One guy brought a sound sys­tem on a lit­tle trail­er with him! We had peo­ple from Glos­sop Cycling club and peo­ple from Staly­bridge and Man­ches­ter as well.

“There was a five year old on the back of a bike and the old­est per­son there was in his 70s I’d say.”

Cars beeped their horns in sup­port of the cyclists and the cam­paign­ers end­ed their wheeled protest with a well-deserved drink at Tintwistle’s Bulls Head pub.

Jonathan added: “We had a police escort, as well, which real­ly helped us.

“There was an arti­cle in the Guardian say­ing more mon­ey should be spent on cycle lanes to save the gov­ern­ment thou­sands in health care and con­ges­tion costs, so we real­ly do need to do some­thing.”

The pub­lic inquiry into the bypass was set to resume yes­ter­day (Wednes­day) after it was dra­mat­i­cal­ly halt­ed when the High­ways Agency admit­ted it had got its fig­ures wrong.

For more infor­ma­tion on the group you can vis­it http://www.myspace.com/roadalert

(from the Glos­sop Adver­tis­er)